The present invention relates in general to a master control for a climate control system with subordinate controls mounted in a rear seat area of a motor vehicle, in particular a passenger car, so that a driver or front seat passenger can selectively activate the rear seat controls.
In larger passenger vehicles such as vans and sport utility vehicles, separately controllable air conditioning units are often installed for the front and rear seating areas. Thus, the temperature and blower speed settings can be independently set. As disclosed in publication JP10119542A, separate control panels may be placed in the front and rear passenger areas to control the settings for their respective portions of the air conditioning system. Settings for the rear passenger area can be made from either the front or rear control panels. Furthermore, the front control panel acts as a master controller which can be used to make the rear control panel inactive.
In order to prevent the rear air conditioning system from being adjusted by playing children, there is usually a separate switch on the front operator control panel at the front air-conditioning unit for locking out or defeating the rear control panel, thereby switching it to a functionless state so that only the driver or other front seat passenger can control the rear seat settings.
This additional switch entails costs and requires space on the master front-seat control panel. This space is becoming ever more cramped, and the large number of operator control elements tends to cause confusion rather than providing a simple operating capability.
In contrast, the object of the invention is to make available a possible way of simplifying the parental control of the rear air-conditioning unit.
A “child lock” system is a conventional feature for rear entry doors in which the functionality of an inside door handle to open the door can be selectively prevented. This protects children riding in a rear seat area by ensuring that they cannot unsafely exit the vehicle even when the door is unlocked to be opened from the outside. Traditionally, a lever has been provided on the door for selectively making or breaking a link between a door latch and the inside door handle. More recently, electrically-powered child locks have been introduced so that the functionality of the inside handle on a rear entry door can be conveniently activated/deactivated from the front seating area by means of a toggle switch.
In Europe, a version of the electronically-controlled child lock system is commonly used which is referred to as a double lock system. A “double lock” state is set by sending a lock command to a latch that is already single locked. In a single locked state, the latch can be mechanically unlocked from the inside of the rear door allowing the inside handle to open the door. In the double locked state, the mechanical unlocking function of the inside handle is disabled just as it is in the child lock system employed in North America with a toggle switch. As used herein, “child lock” refers to either system.